Storm's deluge surprises towns of Natalia, Devine

Published 8:40 pm, Thursday, September 9, 2010

Never before had Rod Wilber, 62, seen as much rain in Natalia as what fell Wednesday night. Never before had the basement of his family's home flooded so badly.

Wilber spent most of Thursday pumping about five feet of brown, smelly water from his basement. It was still halfway up the staircase at noon Thursday. Downstairs, the only possessions visible were floating.

“Nothing you can do about it,” he said. “We'll just have to clean up and fix it up. That's all you can do.”

While the National Weather Service doesn't monitor rain gauges in Natalia, its office in New Braunfels said a weather observer in the neighboring town of Devine reported the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine dumped 11½ inches of rain in the 24-hour period ending Wednesday.

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The storm made landfall Tuesday just south of Brownsville before churning its way through Central Texas, where it was downgraded to a depression before moving north to Oklahoma.

While residents of Natalia and Devine said the area was pounded with heavy rain Tuesday, the real problems didn't begin until Hermine's outer bands lashed them with second and third bouts of storms Wednesday.

“I couldn't even sleep last night,” said Maria Cassiano, 54, who tried in vain to keep floodwaters from trickling into her home in Devine.

Cassiano, like many others, spent Thursday morning mopping and cleaning up the inside of her home. Part of her wood-frame house remained surrounded by water Thursday afternoon.

“You could hear it just flowing underneath the house,” she said.

Devine Mayor Bill Herring said 12 homes and Ruthie's Lounge on FM 132 reported flood damage Thursday. He estimated the city was inundated with 5 inches of rain in 2½ hours late Wednesday.

“We have good drainage — it could be better — but we just couldn't handle 5 inches of rain in that amount of time,” Herring said. “That cell just stood on top of us and gave us a good soaking.”

City Administrator Dora Rodriguez said the town opened up an emergency shelter at the community center, but no residents occupied it.

“I've been here all my life, since '63,” Herring said. “We have had a lot of rainfall because of hurricanes and tropical storms, but over a longer period of time. I can't remember that much rainfall falling within 2 hours, 2½ hours. It just kept on and on and on.”

About five miles to the northeast in Natalia, Wednesday's flooding was so severe that school officials canceled classes Thursday.

Wilber said not even the flooding of 2002 was as bad as the deluge Hermine brought Wednesday night. In 2002, over the course of about a week, more than 30 inches of rain fell on some parts of Bexar County and surrounding areas, filling Medina Lake to the brim and prompting brief panic that the 90-year-old dam might collapse.

“It just didn't get this bad,” Wilber said as he examined his family's pool, now full of murky rainwater. “I have a 5-inch rain gauge and both times it overflowed.”

Said his mother-in-law, Barbara Mann, 61, of the pool, “It was beautiful. It was crystal-clear.

“We'll get her cleaned up again. You'll have to come back and see it then.”